Health ministers from eleven African countries are committed to “ending malaria deaths” by 2030, according to a declaration signed Wednesday (March 6) at a World Health Organization ministerial conference ( WHO) in Yaoundé, Cameroon.

The number of cases in the African region increased from 218 million to 233 million between 2019 and 2022. The signatory states of the declaration assure that they want to mobilize a “political will to reduce mortality due to malaria” but also “national and international financing most important “. Funding “on a global scale is insufficient”, underlines the WHO, with a budget of 4.1 billion dollars (3.7 billion euros) which only covers “a little more than half” of needs.

“No one should die from malaria, given the tools and systems available,” recalls the declaration signed by the health ministers of Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Ghana, Mali, Mozambique, Niger, Nigeria, Uganda, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Sudan and Tanzania, the eleven countries most affected by the disease in Africa. The 2030 horizon seems achievable as a vaccine, Mosquirix (RTS, S from the GSK laboratory) is now available and deployed since the end of 2023 in many countries where the disease is endemic and a second, Matrix (R21 from laboratory at the University of Oxford), will be released later this year.

Complementary strategy

At the end of January, Cameroon launched the first large-scale global vaccination campaign against malaria, coordinated by the WHO and financed by GAVI-the Vaccine Alliance. The Cameroonian Ministry of Health has decided to integrate the antimalaria injection into the country’s routine vaccination and offers it free and systematically, according to the government, to all children under 6 months, at the same time as other vaccines classic infants.

A “complementary” strategy that adds to other means of control” such as impregnated mosquito nets or preventive drug treatments, explains Malachie Manaouda, Minister of Health of Cameroon. Spraying residential areas, or even entire neighborhoods, as well as improving urban sanitation to avoid stagnant water also makes it possible to overcome this scourge.

Because malaria is a disease caused by a parasite transmitted to humans by the bites of certain types of mosquitoes which proliferate in particular during the rainy season. It kills more than 600,000 people each year, 95% of them in Africa, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

The most affected countries on the continent are Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Ghana, Mali, Mozambique, Niger, Nigeria, Uganda, DRC, Sudan and Tanzania.